Lightning
by sansbear
Summary: Bonnie faces her true nature. Set after the events of "Pictures of You".


a/n: One-shot. Had to process some feelings. Damon is in this, but this is not Bamon. This is Bonnie.

* * *

The house was quiet. Bonnie watched it from across the street. The Porter's dog started barking. It was a small thing, with auburn fur and a waddling gait. It climbed onto the window seat in the living room and yipped at any car or jogger. The yip grew the longer anyone stood near the house. Tonight was no exception. Except-Bonnie listened to the yelp of surprised pain. The night resumed its silence.

She stared at the house, blinked, and the house wasn't a house. It was a skeleton, charred, the once green grass ash. Some parts of Jeremy still littered the ground. Her eyes watered. She blinked and it was a house again. The porch light was on. She would go to the side door to the kitchen, knock, and Jeremy would answer and pull her inside and they'd makeout. She would if he were alive. _If he still loved you. If he hadn't have thrown you over for a ghost. If you were strong enough to bring him back._

Bonnie saw him in the shadows, his grotesqueness hidden by shifting light. Everywhere she went, Silas went. Every fear she had, he produced. She felt him crawling over her mind, prying open the cracks to feed on whatever thing was there waiting, dormant. She turned from the ruins of her former life and continued on home. Her dress dragged along the street, the hem growing dirty and damp. She felt heavy and ugly, her hair was a mess, and the magic wiped the make-up from her face. Bonnie came home haggard and haunted. Her father met her at the door. He took one look at her and made her go upstairs while he brewed her favorite tea.

In her bedroom in the dark Bonnie took off the jacket and the shoes and the dress. She left them in a pool in the floor. Her phone lit up on the dresser. Caroline. Matt. Stefan. The phone suddenly crumpled like soda can. She went into the bathroom and stared in the mirror. She felt her neck. Not even a nick. The flesh around her eyes looked smeared with kohl. Something moved beneath the tight skin of her face, behind her dark eyes. It flexed like a muscle, flexing and flexing into a spasm of protracted pain. Bonnie gasped-the mirror cracked. Her father knocked on the door. She grabbed a pair of sweatpants and a shirt.

"Bonnie, I brought you-"

Bonnie rushed past her father. She smelled the lemon as she jogged down the steps, heard her father's voice calling, heard her own feet on the stairs, then on the wooden floor, then pounding the pavement. What she did not hear was her pounding heart, the ragged breath bursting from her mouth. She ran blindly, heedless of the sudden torrential pour happening around her, of the electrical surges and the trees groaning against the wind. She ran and didn't stop until she came to the place in the woods, the small cabin with an ancient writing desk and a tub full of broken gears.

She fell against the door. It opened and she fell further, into arms and a chest and expensive cologne.

Bonnie shook, cold and hot. He gripped her upper arms and led her to the back room. A fire was already lit. He set her before it, went away, came back with a heavy blanket. It was soft and smelled of old papers and citrus oil. She breathed in the scent as the fire flickered in her eyes. The old wood floor creaked under his weight. His ring caught the wink and glint of firelight. She squeezed her eyes shut as a surge of power went through her, urging her to hurt him, to turn that pale hand black then gray.

"You almost killed her."

"Almost."

Bonnie looked at him. Damon stared at the fire. She hoped he was here to kill her. There was no effort in defeating Elena. Damon was cocky, brash, but not stupid. He had a delightful malice in him that Bonnie knew would make a battle between them worth while. She waited.

"Did you want to?"

Bonnie kept her eyes on his. "Yes. I wanted to crush her skull, pull her heart out and light it on fire. I wanted to so badly. I never felt so powerful as when she looked up at me, begging, bleeding, you holding her, helpless, Stefan pleading. I hated her. I wanted her dead. But it would have been pathetic to kill her," Bonnie stoked the flames without thinking.

"You beat the shit out of her."

"Do you want an apology? Because I've got a response to that."

"What?"

"Fuck you."

Damon smiled. "No. She needed it to find out about pain. And fear. How they never leave you, no matter how invincible you may feel."

"Are you here to lecture me?"

"No."

Bonnie stared at him. "No matter how invincible-this is about her humanity. She felt fear. You're here to thank me."

She stood and tossed the blanket into the fire. "I should have killed her. That's what should have happened."

Damon caught up to her outside the cabin. The storm had entered a lull, but the wind still howled. He grabbed her arm as a crack of lightning split the darkness.

"You're losing it, Bonnie. You are losing control."

Bonnie tore her arm away. "And you want to help me? Like Silas wants to help me by controlling me? I'm a means to an end, for all of you."

"I get it. You're pissed and you want to tear down the world. You want to bring down fire and brimstone. You hate and it is alive in you, and you want it out, you want it to devour everyone who has hurt you." Damon squinted at her. "I know you, Bonnie. I would probably do it too. I have done it. But nothing good comes from it. There's no catharsis, no relief."

"Why do you even care? I'm a batshit crazy amnesiac, remember? You take every and any opportunity to rub my face in shit. I don't even know what possessed me to keep coming here, to keep turning to you. Stefan is the saner choice. I must be losing it." Bonnie grinned. Her teeth flashed white like the lightning. "But I can fix that. I can fix _everything_."

Damon heard the blast a second before he felt it. Heat warmed his back. He flew through the air, watched as Bonnie was blown back by the force of it. There was fire on his back, fire along his arm. He blacked out as he landed with a crunch. Rain falling on his face woke him. He sputtered. The burns on his arm were livid as they healed. His shirt fell way. The fire did more damage to his body than he thought. He staggered to his feet.

Bonnie stood a few feet nearby. The blackened skin of her neck and side of her face and arm healed with a rapidity Damon had never seen. Bonnie stared at him, impassive.

"I saw it in the mirror tonight. That hatred. She hates me for Jeremy. I hate her too. I hate you. I hate Stefan and Caroline. I hate all you people. Can't you see that? All the people I love are dead." Tears streamed down her cheeks, but her voice was calm, without a hint of emotion. It was as if she talked of the weather.

"This isn't you. This is the magic," Damon said.

"This is me, Damon. This who I am now. And I like it," Bonnie looked up to the sky. Lightning streaked in a silent barrage above her head. He tasted the electricity in his mouth. It was spectacular and frightening.

Suddenly it was dark. A pure darkness that pressed on him. His eyes still saw her face illuminated by electric light.

"I'm a monster, Damon," Bonnie whispered. He felt her lips brush his ear. "And I like it."

Damon turned to her but she was gone. He stood in the darkness until the fear bent his knees to the wet ground. And he stayed a long while after that.


End file.
